Slightly Late Sunday Update
Apr. 10th, 2022 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI'm not surprised, honestly -- the Sunday "Jon plays a Fallout game" videos always tend to run over SOMEHOW. . .not to mention I didn't get a great night's sleep last night. Brain was too busy when I went to bed, and then I woke up early thanks to being cold and needing the bathroom and never got properly back to sleep. Meeh. At least I'll have a few days at the end of this week where I can sleep in properly! Hell, even Thursday, I don't have to get up until 8 AM. . .
Okay, but even with all that, how'd I do on the to-do list?
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – did that right after doing the write-up below, as per usual. Victor and Preston have cleared out College Square for the Oberland Station settlers (which is better than doing it for the Brotherhood, at least in Victor’s opinion), and Mutt, who is still hanging out with them in the fanfic universe, has got herself a teddy bear to play with, aww. :) Victor’s glad of a job well done, and even gladder to finally be able to move onto Diamond City now! You and me both, buddy.
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, the A:MR video from RagnarRox, and Jon's F:NV "Utter Chaos" video: Check! Got all of them sorted today, yay –
A) Started with Call Me Kevin and another episode of the janky mess that is Hitman VR! Today he played the Paris level from the original “No Subtitle” release, and in the first couple of minutes we had him beat up the news reporter outside until her cameraman actually dropped his camera in shock at the abuse, and then strangle her with fiber wire and watched her fly off into the sky. XD All in a clown outfit, I might tell you. He then proceeded to bumble his way through the rest of the level – fondling waiters and security guards in desperate attempts to knock them out and get their clothes, doing weird wavy-arm dances to try and fit into crowds (this SO did not work), poisoning the food in an attempt to get his targets alone – only to kill/knock out/phase out of existence the cooks so the food couldn’t even be served, knocking out people on the phone on the balcony right in front of an entire silent auction, struggling with the fiber wire (it either doesn’t work at all or sends people to heaven), and finally getting an actual kill by poisoning one target’s drink with rat poison and then drowning her in the toilet (which is censored in VR). And then he turned into a vampire magician to try and get the other target (taking out the security in the attic before opening fire on the model catwalk), which led to the guy being put in lockdown and him having to change back into a guard and break into the basement to shoot him. And then flee before managing to get a DIFFERENT guard outfit and strut out the front gates, while everyone panicked and cowered before him. XD This game is so broken, and yet so good. XD
B) Then it was onto GrayStillPlays and Airport Security, a mobile game that I guess is the sequel to that cop game he played a little while back, or at least uses the same art style and assets. Now you are in charge of an airport – checking passports, scanning passengers and luggage for contraband, and interrogating those whom you have arrested! As you might imagine, Gray was not very good at this. XD Have suntan lotion hidden in your pocket? Enjoy getting elbow-dropped by the security staff! Hide an entire BAT up your blouse? Gray will totally buy that you’re a vampire and just insist you buy it a ticket. Have something suspicious on your passport? It will be highlighted with the world “kill” so the elbow-dropping cops know what to do. Have the drug-sniffing dog find an entire science lab in someone’s suitcase? Gray will be sufficiently impressed to let you go. Add onto that the game’s rather silly sense of humor (the very first passport was for someone called “Ivana Tinkle,” and Gray just cracked up over the later “Betty Humper” (the supposed vampire, btw)), and the fact that you can upgrade your airport to be almost disturbingly “kawaii,” and everybody was having a bad time flying Air Gray. Everybody except the audience, that is. XD
C) Then, this evening, started with that A:MR video RagnarRox video I had in the Watch Later – though, actually, I started with their PREVIOUS video on AMA, since even though I watched that already, it was three months ago and I wanted a refresher. So yeah, Alice double feature, w000! Both were lovely videos on how awesome RagnarRox felt the games were, and how great they were at turning Alice into a protagonist who embodies the struggle with mental illness, and how well the various dark subjects in the duology are treated – even if they felt that Bumby got a little too cartoonishly evil at the end of A:MR, post-twist. (Which – is probably fair, but it does make shoving him onto those train tracks even more satisfying.) There was also a good aside about how letting outside opinion influence you can hurt the latter game – namely, revealing that they didn’t feel like the levels were too long or repetitive at all until they started reading reviews that said they were. (And honestly, when I play, I don’t feel that much – maybe they drag a TOUCH at the end, but I’m generally just enjoying the ride and the scenery.) It’s a nice, positive, lightly-critical look at two of my favorite games, and they were very enjoyable to watch. If you like someone who tries to look for the positive as much as possible in gaming (including gushing over Alice’s dress sense in A:MR, which was kinda adorable), I can recommend them. (And, if you’re a fan of my work, hilarity note – a bit of VTMB is featured briefly when RagnarRox is talking about games and subcultures in relation to the A:MR video, along with some of its music. I mean, I found it funny in light of “Londerland Bloodlines.” XD)
D) And, finally, we had Jon’s F:NV “Utter Chaos” video – “Teleporting To Victory” edition! Because Jon and his commenters have determined that, when the quest markers go particularly wonky, that means the location he’s trying to get to is stuck in a closed loop (aka, two rooms that each have only one exit end up linked to each other – Jon actually got stuck in one of these before, courtesy of trying to meet one of the local Legionnaire leaders, and had to reload a save and avoid a cutscene that would send him there). So if the game was going to cheat him, he was going to cheat back. This episode had two distinct instances of that:
I. The End of Dead Money – Okay, something weirder seems to be going on with the Sierra Madre Vault, as the door out leads to the correct place, but the door in does not, meaning it’s just sort of a one-way trip thing. Either way, console commands got Jon in, and he had a plan. The “moral” behind Dead Money is “you need to let the past go” – the treasure hunt to get the gold out of the vault is doomed to failure, because the vault is set up to just auto-lock whoever fucks with the security down there forever. You try to get the gold bars (and there are a lot of gold bars), and you will be trapped down there until you die. Alternatively, you can just walk away, or you can trick the guy who forced you into this situation, one Father Elijah, into coming down and getting trapped instead, for a bit of poetic justice.
Jon decided he was going to have his cake and eat it too. Namely, he was going to trick Father Elijah into coming down and getting trapped – AFTER looting all the gold. This involved doing some careful platforming (which – occasionally took more than one try), a few absurdly easy speech checks, and getting his timing JUUUST right – because, well, all those gold bars be heavy, and he can’t run after he picks them up. So he had to find JUST the right spot to hide from Elijah as he came in (tiny and in kid’s clothes, Jon loved it), then time his exit so he got out AFTER the force fields went up to trap the intruders and in time to get into the elevator to get back topside. Took three tries, but Jon managed it, left through the main courtyard gates, and got the ending slides! Dead Money officially complete! And where did he end up afterward?
At the BEGINNING of Dead Money. Where he got gassed. And the DLC tried to start again. Trapping him temporarily in an unplayable state.
. . .You know, there’s probably something poetic about the game trying to force him into a time loop after he subverted the main message of the DLC to trap both his tormentor AND take all the gold. And even after he reloaded the save and avoided THAT fate, it still took him ages to actually find an exit back into the proper Mojave through the sewers and the Villa police station, and find his way to the NCR merchant that he wanted to give the gold to (for all the explosives in the world). And involved one death as he tried to jump out of the dinosaur’s mouth in Novac, hoping he could avoid lethal fall damage by first going to the thermometer, then trying to land atop a fence (he could not – the actual correct way to do things was to throw the super-heavy stacked gold bars out of the mouth so he could fast travel to Novac itself and collect them there). But he did make it in the end, got all the grenades and then a few new grenade launchers to keep his in tip-top condition. Cake had, cake eaten.
II. Saving The Brotherhood of Steel – With Dead Money finally complete, and three out of the four DLCs properly sorted (damn you Lonesome Road, refusing to load your ending slides!), it was time to see about the actual main game’s ending. And since Jon was trying to avoid too much more bloodshed (as basically he’d just been getting the worst endings possible for all things lately), he wanted to see if he could get the BOS the stuff they needed for their air purifier so he could play nice with them instead of killing them all. However, the last item he needed was in a part of Vault 11 he just hadn’t found yet, and he suspected it was in a closed loop. So he made us viewers a deal – he would teleport in and find the actual entrance. If it was in a location he could have reached with enough time searching, he would leave it be and go kill the BOS for the NCR. If it was stuck in a closed loop, he would consider it fair to get the part he needed, and he’d go make nice with the BOS instead. He teleported in, found the entrance –
Led to a little store that Jon knows only has one door. Closed loop, let's get the part! This involved a lot of sneaking around enemies that SHOULD be rats but are instead much more scary these days, and killing one Young Deathclaw as he tried to get out and then remembered “oh, yeah, have to TELEPORT out, can’t leave normally.” XD But he got what he needed, reported to the Elder, and got them to go “okay, we’ll play nice with the NCR and even help defend the dam. Oh, and if you go put this one radio transmitter on this one console, we’ll make you a Paladin and give you some INCREDIBLY crappy power armor.” To which Jon said, “To hell with the power armor, but I’ll take the XP,” and managed to get up to the console in question without too much trouble (besides murdering some respawned Omertas on the way). After that, he reported back to his commanding officer (who was – less than pleased at having to be diplomatic with the BOS going forward, which given how much Victor dislikes them in FO4, I can sympathize with), and got the second-to-last mission of the game – protecting the visiting NCR President!
Which is going to be super difficult because, obviously, JON CAN’T GO THROUGH THE NORMAL HOOVER DAM DOORS. They’ll take him different places and make him auto-fail the mission because he’ll have left the president’s security detail. So he has to come up with a plan to keep the president alive without walking through doors. Hmmm. We’ll see how that goes next week!
3. Play Fallout 4 and solve Oberland Station's problem before heading to Diamond City: Check! Victor and Preston had a productive day in the game – they set off across the river to Oberland Station after camping out in Weston Water Treatment, and snuck across the little train bridge that goes past Beantown Brewery (I had Victor sneak up close to get it tagged and the XP for finding it), with the only trouble coming from a vicious alpha mongrel. Once at Oberland, after listening to the ladies there talk about nightmares, Victor asked what their ghoul problem was – turns out they were worried about the ferals under College Square (the game says they’re in College Square, but they’re really in College Square STATION, the subway under it). Victor agreed to take on the job, and he and Preston set out again, past the crushed camper and swimming across the river. To my surprise, this put them right next to the back door into Fraternal Outpost 115 – I debated whether or not to go inside, but decided to leave it for now. Victor’s not exactly a fan of fighting more super mutants with one double-barrel shotgun! Though he did get a nice Mr. Gutsy model from the lunchbox on the table outside. XD
Anyway, the pair got past the outpost, past Danse and company’s police station, and into College Square itself by 10:20 AM in-game time. They spent most of the day just exploring the square and taking out the few enemies left – like a Feral Ghoul Reaver Victor accidentally released from a Pulowski Preservation Shelter. Victor looted all the things, including so much leather armor I think I don’t really need to worry about leather anymore. XD There were a number of stops to give Preston stuff, and one to break down a bunch of scrap in one of the shops to help Victor’s carry weight problems. XD Anyway, they found the remains of the raiders who’d tried to set up a toll road, only to be overwhelmed by the ferals –
And then, while descending back to ground level and giving Preston yet more stuff to carry, there were some explosions just outside the shop. O.o Turned out to be some surviving raiders going up the road into town that’s covered in mines – one just blundered into them, and the other blew themselves up when Victor popped his head over the barricades to see what was going on. After taking all THEIR leather armor, shooting some more ghouls hiding in a bus, and picking up the advertisements for the Easy City Downs racetrack and the “Treasures of Jamaica Plain,” Preston and Victor finally made their way into the subway station at 6:18 PM in-game time. Victor disabled some traps, looted some corpses, then molotoved some ghouls that were wandering around the shopping area, which – worked reasonably well. He and Preston killed the survivors, did a bit more looting, then Victor went down further and sniped off a bunch of the ghouls on one side of the subway tunnel before setting up camp at 9:08 PM (fatigue was stopping me using his action points effectively).
Bright and early the next morning (11/19/2287), he and Preston headed down the OTHER side to kill the ghouls there – Victor attempted some sniping, but it went very wrong and he and Preston BOTH ended up needing stimpacks as he fought off a Reaver. *wince* They headed down and killed the remaining ghouls with less fuss, finding all the remaining dead raiders and taking their stuff. And unlocking everything possible for experience – hey, this sort of thing got me up to Level 16 this session! :) Finally, we got down to the final ghoul – Victor tried to sneak up on it, but failed, and Preston ended up killing it. *shrug* Grabbed some goodies from the room it was hanging out in, then it was back out into Cambridge proper at 8:23 AM, heading down the formerly-mined road and over to the proper bridge, where there was the remains of a bunch of scavvers who’d fought some ghouls –
And a couple of raiders on the bridge. Non-hostile. With one running up as Victor approached and demanding 100 caps as a toll.
Yeaaaah, Victor and Preston shot them in the face. Though not without damage, as one of them had a damn hair trigger pistol and got a lot of shots on Victor as he reloaded his gun. *grumble* Still, they went down easy, and the pair were able to get past Beantown Brewery and back to Oberland, who expressed their gratitude and joined up, yay. They even got proper defense and everything, as Victor had a bunch of supplies and could build them a couple of HEAVY turrets, w00. :D Last order of business was to choose my level-up perk – went with Gunslinger rank one, so Victor could get a boost to his non-automatic pistols as well. Going good – and now, FINALLY, Victor should be able to just go to Diamond City, yay! We are returning to main plot, w000!
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – after catching up with the posts and tags and stuff on tumblr, I spent some time both before and after lunch getting this week’s Smiler Always update ready in the drafts on Victor Luvs Alice! Pretty simple update, all things considered, but there was a fair amount of writing involved, so. . .still, that’s good for Wednesday, and I have some options for Thursday and Friday, so I’m in a pretty good state over on my main blog. :) And Valice Multiverse only had one ask reply, so that’s all set too.
5. Get in a workout: As I suspected, no check – got too wrapped up in other stuff (namely, my video gaming and my YouTube Subs). Didn’t help that I was tired. . .tomorrow we start the next Oxventure!
Additionally:
-->Answered my latest FF.net PM from Ace, AND a bunch of comments from someone going through some older Forgotten Vows Verse stuff on AO3! Busy just-post-lunch on that front, to be sure. . .but it’s nice to get some comments, and some updates on Ace’s life. :)
Not too bad, not too bad. And now I just have three work days plus the oil change to get through this week! :) And tomorrow I get to come home SLIGHTLY early thanks to a special Mass at the nearby cathedral -- they're closing the main office building at 4 instead of 4:30, so that's something. We'll see how that goes! Night all!
Okay, but even with all that, how'd I do on the to-do list?
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – did that right after doing the write-up below, as per usual. Victor and Preston have cleared out College Square for the Oberland Station settlers (which is better than doing it for the Brotherhood, at least in Victor’s opinion), and Mutt, who is still hanging out with them in the fanfic universe, has got herself a teddy bear to play with, aww. :) Victor’s glad of a job well done, and even gladder to finally be able to move onto Diamond City now! You and me both, buddy.
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, the A:MR video from RagnarRox, and Jon's F:NV "Utter Chaos" video: Check! Got all of them sorted today, yay –
A) Started with Call Me Kevin and another episode of the janky mess that is Hitman VR! Today he played the Paris level from the original “No Subtitle” release, and in the first couple of minutes we had him beat up the news reporter outside until her cameraman actually dropped his camera in shock at the abuse, and then strangle her with fiber wire and watched her fly off into the sky. XD All in a clown outfit, I might tell you. He then proceeded to bumble his way through the rest of the level – fondling waiters and security guards in desperate attempts to knock them out and get their clothes, doing weird wavy-arm dances to try and fit into crowds (this SO did not work), poisoning the food in an attempt to get his targets alone – only to kill/knock out/phase out of existence the cooks so the food couldn’t even be served, knocking out people on the phone on the balcony right in front of an entire silent auction, struggling with the fiber wire (it either doesn’t work at all or sends people to heaven), and finally getting an actual kill by poisoning one target’s drink with rat poison and then drowning her in the toilet (which is censored in VR). And then he turned into a vampire magician to try and get the other target (taking out the security in the attic before opening fire on the model catwalk), which led to the guy being put in lockdown and him having to change back into a guard and break into the basement to shoot him. And then flee before managing to get a DIFFERENT guard outfit and strut out the front gates, while everyone panicked and cowered before him. XD This game is so broken, and yet so good. XD
B) Then it was onto GrayStillPlays and Airport Security, a mobile game that I guess is the sequel to that cop game he played a little while back, or at least uses the same art style and assets. Now you are in charge of an airport – checking passports, scanning passengers and luggage for contraband, and interrogating those whom you have arrested! As you might imagine, Gray was not very good at this. XD Have suntan lotion hidden in your pocket? Enjoy getting elbow-dropped by the security staff! Hide an entire BAT up your blouse? Gray will totally buy that you’re a vampire and just insist you buy it a ticket. Have something suspicious on your passport? It will be highlighted with the world “kill” so the elbow-dropping cops know what to do. Have the drug-sniffing dog find an entire science lab in someone’s suitcase? Gray will be sufficiently impressed to let you go. Add onto that the game’s rather silly sense of humor (the very first passport was for someone called “Ivana Tinkle,” and Gray just cracked up over the later “Betty Humper” (the supposed vampire, btw)), and the fact that you can upgrade your airport to be almost disturbingly “kawaii,” and everybody was having a bad time flying Air Gray. Everybody except the audience, that is. XD
C) Then, this evening, started with that A:MR video RagnarRox video I had in the Watch Later – though, actually, I started with their PREVIOUS video on AMA, since even though I watched that already, it was three months ago and I wanted a refresher. So yeah, Alice double feature, w000! Both were lovely videos on how awesome RagnarRox felt the games were, and how great they were at turning Alice into a protagonist who embodies the struggle with mental illness, and how well the various dark subjects in the duology are treated – even if they felt that Bumby got a little too cartoonishly evil at the end of A:MR, post-twist. (Which – is probably fair, but it does make shoving him onto those train tracks even more satisfying.) There was also a good aside about how letting outside opinion influence you can hurt the latter game – namely, revealing that they didn’t feel like the levels were too long or repetitive at all until they started reading reviews that said they were. (And honestly, when I play, I don’t feel that much – maybe they drag a TOUCH at the end, but I’m generally just enjoying the ride and the scenery.) It’s a nice, positive, lightly-critical look at two of my favorite games, and they were very enjoyable to watch. If you like someone who tries to look for the positive as much as possible in gaming (including gushing over Alice’s dress sense in A:MR, which was kinda adorable), I can recommend them. (And, if you’re a fan of my work, hilarity note – a bit of VTMB is featured briefly when RagnarRox is talking about games and subcultures in relation to the A:MR video, along with some of its music. I mean, I found it funny in light of “Londerland Bloodlines.” XD)
D) And, finally, we had Jon’s F:NV “Utter Chaos” video – “Teleporting To Victory” edition! Because Jon and his commenters have determined that, when the quest markers go particularly wonky, that means the location he’s trying to get to is stuck in a closed loop (aka, two rooms that each have only one exit end up linked to each other – Jon actually got stuck in one of these before, courtesy of trying to meet one of the local Legionnaire leaders, and had to reload a save and avoid a cutscene that would send him there). So if the game was going to cheat him, he was going to cheat back. This episode had two distinct instances of that:
I. The End of Dead Money – Okay, something weirder seems to be going on with the Sierra Madre Vault, as the door out leads to the correct place, but the door in does not, meaning it’s just sort of a one-way trip thing. Either way, console commands got Jon in, and he had a plan. The “moral” behind Dead Money is “you need to let the past go” – the treasure hunt to get the gold out of the vault is doomed to failure, because the vault is set up to just auto-lock whoever fucks with the security down there forever. You try to get the gold bars (and there are a lot of gold bars), and you will be trapped down there until you die. Alternatively, you can just walk away, or you can trick the guy who forced you into this situation, one Father Elijah, into coming down and getting trapped instead, for a bit of poetic justice.
Jon decided he was going to have his cake and eat it too. Namely, he was going to trick Father Elijah into coming down and getting trapped – AFTER looting all the gold. This involved doing some careful platforming (which – occasionally took more than one try), a few absurdly easy speech checks, and getting his timing JUUUST right – because, well, all those gold bars be heavy, and he can’t run after he picks them up. So he had to find JUST the right spot to hide from Elijah as he came in (tiny and in kid’s clothes, Jon loved it), then time his exit so he got out AFTER the force fields went up to trap the intruders and in time to get into the elevator to get back topside. Took three tries, but Jon managed it, left through the main courtyard gates, and got the ending slides! Dead Money officially complete! And where did he end up afterward?
At the BEGINNING of Dead Money. Where he got gassed. And the DLC tried to start again. Trapping him temporarily in an unplayable state.
. . .You know, there’s probably something poetic about the game trying to force him into a time loop after he subverted the main message of the DLC to trap both his tormentor AND take all the gold. And even after he reloaded the save and avoided THAT fate, it still took him ages to actually find an exit back into the proper Mojave through the sewers and the Villa police station, and find his way to the NCR merchant that he wanted to give the gold to (for all the explosives in the world). And involved one death as he tried to jump out of the dinosaur’s mouth in Novac, hoping he could avoid lethal fall damage by first going to the thermometer, then trying to land atop a fence (he could not – the actual correct way to do things was to throw the super-heavy stacked gold bars out of the mouth so he could fast travel to Novac itself and collect them there). But he did make it in the end, got all the grenades and then a few new grenade launchers to keep his in tip-top condition. Cake had, cake eaten.
II. Saving The Brotherhood of Steel – With Dead Money finally complete, and three out of the four DLCs properly sorted (damn you Lonesome Road, refusing to load your ending slides!), it was time to see about the actual main game’s ending. And since Jon was trying to avoid too much more bloodshed (as basically he’d just been getting the worst endings possible for all things lately), he wanted to see if he could get the BOS the stuff they needed for their air purifier so he could play nice with them instead of killing them all. However, the last item he needed was in a part of Vault 11 he just hadn’t found yet, and he suspected it was in a closed loop. So he made us viewers a deal – he would teleport in and find the actual entrance. If it was in a location he could have reached with enough time searching, he would leave it be and go kill the BOS for the NCR. If it was stuck in a closed loop, he would consider it fair to get the part he needed, and he’d go make nice with the BOS instead. He teleported in, found the entrance –
Led to a little store that Jon knows only has one door. Closed loop, let's get the part! This involved a lot of sneaking around enemies that SHOULD be rats but are instead much more scary these days, and killing one Young Deathclaw as he tried to get out and then remembered “oh, yeah, have to TELEPORT out, can’t leave normally.” XD But he got what he needed, reported to the Elder, and got them to go “okay, we’ll play nice with the NCR and even help defend the dam. Oh, and if you go put this one radio transmitter on this one console, we’ll make you a Paladin and give you some INCREDIBLY crappy power armor.” To which Jon said, “To hell with the power armor, but I’ll take the XP,” and managed to get up to the console in question without too much trouble (besides murdering some respawned Omertas on the way). After that, he reported back to his commanding officer (who was – less than pleased at having to be diplomatic with the BOS going forward, which given how much Victor dislikes them in FO4, I can sympathize with), and got the second-to-last mission of the game – protecting the visiting NCR President!
Which is going to be super difficult because, obviously, JON CAN’T GO THROUGH THE NORMAL HOOVER DAM DOORS. They’ll take him different places and make him auto-fail the mission because he’ll have left the president’s security detail. So he has to come up with a plan to keep the president alive without walking through doors. Hmmm. We’ll see how that goes next week!
3. Play Fallout 4 and solve Oberland Station's problem before heading to Diamond City: Check! Victor and Preston had a productive day in the game – they set off across the river to Oberland Station after camping out in Weston Water Treatment, and snuck across the little train bridge that goes past Beantown Brewery (I had Victor sneak up close to get it tagged and the XP for finding it), with the only trouble coming from a vicious alpha mongrel. Once at Oberland, after listening to the ladies there talk about nightmares, Victor asked what their ghoul problem was – turns out they were worried about the ferals under College Square (the game says they’re in College Square, but they’re really in College Square STATION, the subway under it). Victor agreed to take on the job, and he and Preston set out again, past the crushed camper and swimming across the river. To my surprise, this put them right next to the back door into Fraternal Outpost 115 – I debated whether or not to go inside, but decided to leave it for now. Victor’s not exactly a fan of fighting more super mutants with one double-barrel shotgun! Though he did get a nice Mr. Gutsy model from the lunchbox on the table outside. XD
Anyway, the pair got past the outpost, past Danse and company’s police station, and into College Square itself by 10:20 AM in-game time. They spent most of the day just exploring the square and taking out the few enemies left – like a Feral Ghoul Reaver Victor accidentally released from a Pulowski Preservation Shelter. Victor looted all the things, including so much leather armor I think I don’t really need to worry about leather anymore. XD There were a number of stops to give Preston stuff, and one to break down a bunch of scrap in one of the shops to help Victor’s carry weight problems. XD Anyway, they found the remains of the raiders who’d tried to set up a toll road, only to be overwhelmed by the ferals –
And then, while descending back to ground level and giving Preston yet more stuff to carry, there were some explosions just outside the shop. O.o Turned out to be some surviving raiders going up the road into town that’s covered in mines – one just blundered into them, and the other blew themselves up when Victor popped his head over the barricades to see what was going on. After taking all THEIR leather armor, shooting some more ghouls hiding in a bus, and picking up the advertisements for the Easy City Downs racetrack and the “Treasures of Jamaica Plain,” Preston and Victor finally made their way into the subway station at 6:18 PM in-game time. Victor disabled some traps, looted some corpses, then molotoved some ghouls that were wandering around the shopping area, which – worked reasonably well. He and Preston killed the survivors, did a bit more looting, then Victor went down further and sniped off a bunch of the ghouls on one side of the subway tunnel before setting up camp at 9:08 PM (fatigue was stopping me using his action points effectively).
Bright and early the next morning (11/19/2287), he and Preston headed down the OTHER side to kill the ghouls there – Victor attempted some sniping, but it went very wrong and he and Preston BOTH ended up needing stimpacks as he fought off a Reaver. *wince* They headed down and killed the remaining ghouls with less fuss, finding all the remaining dead raiders and taking their stuff. And unlocking everything possible for experience – hey, this sort of thing got me up to Level 16 this session! :) Finally, we got down to the final ghoul – Victor tried to sneak up on it, but failed, and Preston ended up killing it. *shrug* Grabbed some goodies from the room it was hanging out in, then it was back out into Cambridge proper at 8:23 AM, heading down the formerly-mined road and over to the proper bridge, where there was the remains of a bunch of scavvers who’d fought some ghouls –
And a couple of raiders on the bridge. Non-hostile. With one running up as Victor approached and demanding 100 caps as a toll.
Yeaaaah, Victor and Preston shot them in the face. Though not without damage, as one of them had a damn hair trigger pistol and got a lot of shots on Victor as he reloaded his gun. *grumble* Still, they went down easy, and the pair were able to get past Beantown Brewery and back to Oberland, who expressed their gratitude and joined up, yay. They even got proper defense and everything, as Victor had a bunch of supplies and could build them a couple of HEAVY turrets, w00. :D Last order of business was to choose my level-up perk – went with Gunslinger rank one, so Victor could get a boost to his non-automatic pistols as well. Going good – and now, FINALLY, Victor should be able to just go to Diamond City, yay! We are returning to main plot, w000!
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – after catching up with the posts and tags and stuff on tumblr, I spent some time both before and after lunch getting this week’s Smiler Always update ready in the drafts on Victor Luvs Alice! Pretty simple update, all things considered, but there was a fair amount of writing involved, so. . .still, that’s good for Wednesday, and I have some options for Thursday and Friday, so I’m in a pretty good state over on my main blog. :) And Valice Multiverse only had one ask reply, so that’s all set too.
5. Get in a workout: As I suspected, no check – got too wrapped up in other stuff (namely, my video gaming and my YouTube Subs). Didn’t help that I was tired. . .tomorrow we start the next Oxventure!
Additionally:
-->Answered my latest FF.net PM from Ace, AND a bunch of comments from someone going through some older Forgotten Vows Verse stuff on AO3! Busy just-post-lunch on that front, to be sure. . .but it’s nice to get some comments, and some updates on Ace’s life. :)
Not too bad, not too bad. And now I just have three work days plus the oil change to get through this week! :) And tomorrow I get to come home SLIGHTLY early thanks to a special Mass at the nearby cathedral -- they're closing the main office building at 4 instead of 4:30, so that's something. We'll see how that goes! Night all!
